I'm going in to more detail about the setting of one of my short stories. Its a Victorian house that used to be a home clinic (before the occupants died). Its supposed to have a low rough iron fence in the front and a fenced in garden in the back hidden from view. Outside of the garden, but still on the property, is a shack where the maintenance man/migrant boarder lives. the time period is between 1900 and 1920. it would be located in a suburban area close enough to the city to have a steady flow of visitors, but far enough away to be "mysterious" yet "prime real-estate" once the business has shut down. I'm basing the look of the house off of this picture (minus the gazebo): (The website I got this from doesn't talk about land size...) Just a rough estimate of land size, not the house size. the land is important.
I can picture an expansive backyard with gardens behind it. Maybe it sits on an acre total? It depends on the terrain of the town. Flat towns tend to spread out. If you're in some place like Deadwood, then nobody has so much space.
It would also depend on the part of the country (or world) where the house is. In the older east coast cities in the US, I'm astonished at how much land the older (pre WW1) mansions are on. One half acre is not unusual, and a full acre or two is rarer, but still there. Here in the "fab 40s" suburb in Sacramento, California, the lot sizes are a lot smaller, sometimes only two or three times the size of the house itself.
Early homes often had a larger lot size, as many had a kitchen garden at the time. The more urban the area, the smaller the lot size would be, as a general rule. In some more rural areas I have seen, lot sizes of five acres are not uncommon. Looking at the picture you posted, the house is red brick, which is common from about St Louis to the east coast. another thing to factor in, is that it was not uncommon to built a house like that so it was backed by wood lands. I would say that a one acre lot would be about right.
By comparison, my lot of .17 acres is considered huge by urban standards. Until you get into the million dollar homes on the East Side near Brown, but most of those are big houses on slightly larger lots. I think I was able to mow my lawn for the entire season with one 3 gallon jug of gas. Might even be enough leftover to rock the snowblower if it wasn't a two-stroke engine.
